ABSTRACT
Any analysis of the development of national communism must begin with an examination of the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marx believed that nation-states are revolutionary vehicles because they are the organizations through which the bourgeoisie exercises political power. The right of national self-determination was selectively granted by Marx to those systems that had exhibited revolutionary potential, or to those nations whose independence would contribute to the decline of an advanced capitalist state. Marx's views on nationalism may be simply summarized. Nationalism, as a political movement that depicts the state as the ideal vehicle for human progress, he rejected as bourgeois ideology. Contemporary national communism has taken two forms: that of the antihegemonic ruling parties in Eastern Europe; and the antiimperialist, Marxist national liberation movements of nonruling groups throughout Asia. In Marx's opinion, national claims made by uncivilized populations with no economic base were premature and patently bourgeois.
